Day: February 26, 2009

Well, yes. It’s Thursday night, so it’s time for a break from all this depressing stuff about football clubs going bust and time for another episode of “Shit Shot Mungo”, the cartoon which features everybody’s favourite incompetent Scottish footballer (insert your own jokes here). This week, in the light of Heart of Clackmannanshire’s 2-0 home defeat by 73rd Lanark, local hack Fleetwood MacAlbatross has some harsh words for The Clackers’ manager, Henny Jings. Meanwhile, Mungo demonstrates his own trademark style of training. Artwork courtesy of Ted “The Neck” Carter. Molto...

The most surprising thing about Darlington’s announcement of insolvency today is twofold. Firstly, it’s surprising that they are the first Football League club to have sunk this far this season. After all, it is almost March. Secondly, it’s surprising that it is Darlington that managed to get to the insolvency practitioners first. There have been plenty of clubs (for reasons that we have been into on here before, Southampton spring immediately to mind) that have looked like they are sailing close to the wind, but Darlo have pipped them all to the post. The question now for the League Two club is whether this is the beginning of the end or an opportunity to build a new beginning on a more sustainable basis. The announcement was made this afternoon, ironically only a day after a new sponsorship deal was announced with local newspaper, The Northern Echo. The club is said to be £5m in debt and losing money hand over fist with crowds having fallen this season in spite of the fact that they were pushing hard for a place in the League Two play-offs. The automatic ten point deduction from the Football League is a massive blow to them, but even this wouldn’t run their season. It would drop them from seventh place, in the play-off places and with a decent chance of winning automatic promotion, to twelfth...